In a letter responding to a constituent, Democratic New York state senator Kevin Parker dismissed concerns that admitting male inmates into the state’s women’s prisons would endanger vulnerable female residents, simply declaring that because the male prisoners identify as transgender, they “are not men.”

The constituent, a lifelong Democrat and the mother of a child struggling with gender dysphoria, petitioned Parker after she learned of a bill recently passed by the state legislature that would enshrine and protect “gender identity” and “gender expression” in all areas of public life.

“As you mistakenly mentioned, these are not ‘men’ with ill intentions but are a part of transgender individuals who have the right to identify with their respective gender identities,” Parker responded in a letter obtained by National Review. “They are, in fact, women, many of whom have gone through an all-encompassing, lengthy, and life-threatening transition.”

The legislation, the Brooklyn mom argued in her letter, “harms women by allowing males access to all female spaces. This results in the rape of incarcerated women by male criminals housed with them; in the destruction of girls’ and women’s sports; in inaccurate criminal and medical records; and in the loss of privacy, dignity, and safety for all women and girls in New York State.”

Recent incidents would seem to vindicate the mother’s fears about transgender-perpetrated sexual abuse in the New York State prison system.

In April, a male inmate identifying as a woman was convicted of raping a female prisoner while housed at the women's facility on Riker’s Island. While he was a resident of the Rose M. Singer Center, the section of the prison formerly reserved exclusively for female detainees and sentenced inmates, Ramel Blount, who goes by the name Diamond Blount, violently sexually assaulted a 33-year-old woman in the bathroom, pinning her down and raping her. Many other such cases have been reported in other states, including the Washington Corrections Center for Women outside Seattle, Wash.

Yet Parker claimed that the transgender felons, many of whom retain their male genitalia and physical strength at the time they are transferred, are at a greater risk of experiencing sexual violence in prison than the female inmates who are forced to cohabitate with them.

“You mentioned that transgender individuals are a threat to women in prisons. However, studies show that nearly all transgender people who enter jails or prisons in New York will be harassed,” he claimed. “Moreover, physical violence is widespread and transgender people are nearly ten times more likely to be sexually assaulted than an individual in the general prison population.”

A Saturday New York Times story about a transgender serial killer parrots similar statistics, stating that “transgender people are far more likely to become victims of violence, not perpetrators, and data from the National Center for Transgender Equality suggests more than half of transgender people who stay in shelters encounter harassment.”

The Times article details the case of Harvey Marcelin, a repeat offender convicted of murdering two women, who transitioned after he was released from prison on parole in 2019. The crimes he committed over the course of his life also include attempted rapes and murders; one of his victims was his girlfriend at the time of the murder.

When he was freed in 2019 after spending roughly 50 years, over two separate periods, in jail, Marcelin, then calling himself Marceline Harvey, sought placement in a homeless shelter for women in the Bronx. The shelter admitted him despite the safety concerns of the facility’s nurse practitioner, Anne Brennan, over his homicidal streak.

“Apparently his feelings and identity [as a transgender woman] were far more important than all the other women that were terrified of him,” she said.

It was after his admission to the center on the basis of his female gender preference that he committed his most recent crime: the murder of Susan Leyden, whom he mutilated and dumped in a bag in East New York.

“Our policy — in accordance with the law — is to place individuals in shelters based on their reported gender identity,” Julia Savel, a spokeswoman for the city's Department of Social Services, told the Times. “Being homeless or transgender does not make you inherently violent and are not connected to the crime that was committed.”

Parker’s office did not respond when asked if the violence at Riker’s and the homeless shelter might make him reconsider his position.